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Monday, April 6, 2015

Get Crackin'

I've never been a huge fan of eggs. I don't have a "bad egg" story from my youth; they were just never my favourite thing. My siblings ate scrambled eggs, but I stuck to peanut butter toast, thank you very much. And I still do.

But I make an exception for Easter. (No, not an egg-ception - you will have to indulge in your ovo-related punnery elsewhere.) My family's Easter egg traditions were strictly of the chocolate variety, but Erik and his parents make fancy hard boiled eggs each year. Cut in half, pop out the yolk, add balsamic vinegar, a little olive oil, mustard and pepper, and eat with the aforementioned yolk. I'm sure it took no end of coaxing to persuade me to try this the first time, but I agree these eggs are delicious.

Once Erik and I had kids, we started dyeing our Easter eggs, too. This was clever thinking on Erik's part; eggs aren't always at the top of my mental grocery list unless I am baking something. Turning eggs into a craft not only ensured they would be in the house for Easter, but also that there would be a lot of them.This year, we invited some of the girls' friends to dye their own eggs with us on Saturday afternoon.

Usually we just go for the straight solid-colour approach, but this year we broadened our horizons. The kids brought elastic bands, stickers and wax crayons to make designs and block the dye.

While I prepped glasses full of dye in the kitchen, the kids worked at the table. Amongst the shrieking and chatter, I heard a crack.

"Amy, I dropped my egg and the shell cracked. Can I eat it?"
"Sure, go ahead." I put out a bowl to collect the broken bits of shell and went back to my job.

Two minutes later, another crack.

"Ohh, my egg broke," complained a different child.
"That's okay," I said. "Just peel the stickers off; you can use those again."
"Can I eat it?"
"Of course."

Both pretty and delicious.

And so it continued. They dyed eggs. They dropped eggs. They ate eggs. I was glad that I had boiled so many extras; an hour in, I wasn't convinced we would have many left come Sunday morning. Nor did I believe these eggs were as slippery as the kids claimed. Their enthusiastic willingness to gobble down their fourth or fifth "dropped" egg was highly suspicious in my view.

As the kids wound down, I had a chance to decorate a few eggs of my own. One somehow turned out like an eyeball.

The kids were simultaneously delighted and disgusted by my eyeball egg.

As I wound elastic bands around egg #3, it jumped from my grasp and hit the counter. Crack.

Oh. Maybe those eggs were slipperier than I thought.

We oiled up the surviving eggs, and the kids showed off their hard work.

The Master Decorators

The Master Decorators, zombie-style

And, somehow, there were enough eggs for Easter morning. Barely, but enough.

Happy Easter!

Now I am full of egg/vinegar/oil/mustard/pepper, and all is right with the world. I'm set until next year.